


Eight Days a Week

by anonymous_yet_again



Series: Day by Day [3]
Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, Fluff, Jules Ships It, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, consent is cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again
Summary: Five times other people realize Shawn and Lassie love each other, and one time that Shawn and Lassie realize (well, admit) it, too._____Set after “Blue Monday (and Tuesday and…)” and “Just Another Manic Saturday” but stands on its own pretty OK. Title from the Beatles song, of course, which isn’t from the 80s but it was too good not to use.
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster/Juliet O'Hara, Carlton Lassiter/Shawn Spencer
Series: Day by Day [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836364
Comments: 20
Kudos: 189





	Eight Days a Week

**Author's Note:**

> CW for brief mention of sexual assault to an offscreen minor character (part of a case)

** Buzz **

Buzz McNab checked his watch as he got back to the station after a patrol. 1:30pm. A perfect time to swing by the break room and eat some of those cookies Francine had made; he was getting hungry again. He really was lucky to have Francine, Buzz reflected as he made his long-legged way across the station. Marriage was great. An equal partnership. She made him food, and he...well, he did a lot, he was sure, but he was distracted from figuring out specifics by the thought of the cookies. Almost there.

Buzz was whistling when he made it to the break room door. The door was closed, which was unusual, and there was a sign on it that said “Quiet: Let sleepy dogs play” in messy handwriting. Someone with neater handwriting had corrected it to: “Quiet: Let sleeping dogs lie,” and had added a “Please” under the “Quiet.” Buzz stopped whistling obediently, and opened the door carefully.

Shawn and Detective Lassiter were both sitting on the break room couch, with the remains of their lunches on the low table in front of them. Well, Shawn was sitting, playing some kind of game on his phone. Detective Lassiter was slumped over towards Shawn, with his head on his shoulder, and drooling slightly onto Shawn’s shirt.

“Hi, Buzz,” said Shawn in a whisper. Buzz had to get closer to hear him; he was quieter than Buzz had ever heard him.

“Is Lassiter OK?” Buzz whispered back.

“He’s just tired,” said Shawn. “Hasn’t been sleeping well this week. He fell asleep while we were eating lunch and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up, so I got Gus to help me make a sign.”

“Won’t he be mad?” asked Buzz, going to the fridge and getting out the cookies, then considering. The tupperware they were in was always pretty loud when he opened it; maybe it was better to take it out of the room.

“I’ll risk it,” whispered Shawn, with a grin. Detective Lassiter made a noise, and both Shawn and Buzz froze, but he just shifted a little, and kind of wrapped his arm under Shawn’s, without waking up. Shawn stayed frozen as Lassiter subsided, except that he smiled again, a fond smile, almost as though he couldn’t help it.

Buzz waved goodbye to Shawn, and took the whole tupperware of cookies out of the room, remembering just in time to close the door softly. Having the cookies with him reminded him of how lucky he was to be married to Francine, which was mostly what he thought about as he headed back to the bullpen. He spared a thought, though, to think that Shawn and Detective Lassiter were pretty lucky to have each other, too.

** Chief Vick **

Karen Vick wasn’t a particularly religious woman, but she wondered occasionally if she could be nominated, or whatever the word was, for a sainthood someday. She certainly thought she deserved it.

“Mr. Spencer,” she said calmly, “now that you’ve _had_ the vision, do you think you could maybe _explain_ it?”

Shawn Spencer, who’d spent the last five minutes ricocheting around her office and also feeling up Detective Lassiter, perched on the table in the corner and grinned. Maybe she was being unfair; in the past several months, Spencer had actually been much less--inappropriate with the ways he tended to grope Lassiter during visions. He still touched the detective’s face a lot, though.

“I’m glad you asked, Chief,” said Spencer. “What I’m saying--uh, what the spirits revealed, is that the gun was moved _after_ it was fired. Something about smoke.”

“The dark mark on the wall!” said Lassiter. “It wasn’t a scuff, it was powder residue.”

“Yes!” said Spencer. “Which means that the gun--”

“Wasn’t fired at the angle we found it!” said Lassiter. “It wasn’t a murder-suicide--”

“It was a double murder!” said Spencer. “And we know _exactly_ who benefits from both those deaths--”

“Sweet Lady Justice--it _was_ Gregor,” said Lassiter. “Chief--”

Karen glanced amusedly at Guster and O’Hara, who were standing near their respective partners but who wouldn’t have been able to get a word in if they’d tried. Spencer and Lassiter had been bouncing back and forth too quickly. “I’ll get you a warrant,” she said, moving to her desk.

“Good work, Sha--Spencer,” said Lassiter.

“Lassie,” proclaimed Spencer, “I could kiss you.”

Karen looked up at that, interested in spite of herself. She already knew exactly as much as she needed to about what was going on between Spencer and Lassiter, which was the gist with _no details_ , thank you very much. Lassiter was quite red, but he didn’t look mad. “Not in the chief’s office,” he muttered.

“Of course not, Lassie,” said Shawn, hopping down from the table and holding out his hand. “Besides, we have a bad guy to catch first.”

To Karen’s surprise, Lassiter did take Shawn’s hand as they left her office. He dropped it a second later, but she’d seen him squeeze, first. She frowned thoughtfully at her paperwork. Maybe it was time to learn just a little more about how serious the two were.

** Henry **

Shawn had a lot of potential, in pretty much every dimension. It was why it was so frustrating when he didn’t live up to it, whether in school, police work, or his romantic entanglements. At least with that last one, Henry had grown pretty used to the way Shawn moved through partners, but he’d always known he _could_ find someone and stick with them, if he just _tried_.

Despite the fact that he was very certain he’d known Shawn was bi before Shawn himself had, he’d never in a million years expected that someone to be _Carlton Lassiter_. But it was sure looking like it was.

“Hi, Dad,” said Shawn when he and Lassiter showed up for dinner. Finally. Once Shawn had pulled his head out of his ass and admitted that he and Lassiter had something serious going on, Henry had invited them both to dinner, but somehow, they’d been busy on every single date that he’d suggested for months. He’d finally told them to pick a day, any day, and he would grill.

“Shawn, Carlton,” said Henry. Both of them made a weird face, but he wasn’t going to call his son’s boyfriend by his last name all the time, even if Shawn still seemed to use that ridiculous nickname. “Come on in. Can I get either of you a beer?”

All three of them were uncomfortable, which Henry had expected, but it wasn’t nearly as painful as it could have been. Shawn talked too much and Lassiter hardly talked at all, but at least they were all three able to talk about some police-related things, and remind each other of a few past cases. Henry told an embarrassing story about Shawn’s childhood, and even got Lassiter to laugh. And they both complemented his cooking.

Both of them helped him clean up, because Lassiter offered and Henry shot Shawn a look that made him sigh and start clearing plates, too. Then they stood around in the kitchen finishing their second beers. “Better go make sure the grill’s out,” said Henry eventually, glancing out at the darkening sky.

Outside, he did what he had to do, breathed in the scents of charcoal and evening air appreciatively, and then turned back towards the house and paused. Shawn and Lassiter were outlined perfectly in the lit kitchen window, standing with their arms around each other. They weren’t kissing or anything; it probably would have been less intimate if they had been. Instead they were talking, with their faces only a few inches apart. As Henry watched, Shawn slid his hands up to cup Lassiter's face, said something quiet and apparently sincere, and did kiss him, quickly. Then he wrapped his arms around Lassiter’s shoulders and, as the detective put his head down on Shawn’s shoulder, turned his own head towards the window and made eye contact with Henry.

Damn the kid’s observation skills. That Henry had trained into him. He cleared his throat, even though Shawn couldn’t hear him, and looked away quickly. Maybe he should check the grill one more time, before he went back inside.

No, Carlton Lassiter wasn’t who he’d expected, but Henry supposed he wasn’t too bad.

** Gus **

“You are a dumbass,” said Gus.

“But I’m _your_ dumbass,” said Shawn cheerfully. Gus huffed. The EMT cleaning the long, shallow cut across Shawn’s forehead looked between them awkwardly, and finished what she was doing quickly.

“I’m still mad at you,” said Gus, as the EMT wrapped a bandage around Shawn’s head to hold a gauze pad in place, and then went to the front of the ambulance to throw out her gloves or do paperwork or something. “If you’re so _smart_ , why didn’t you know he had a gun? Why didn’t you wait for backup?”

“I knew he had a gun, but I _also_ knew he wasn’t going to use it,” Shawn argued, feeling the bandage gingerly. “How do I look?”

“Like a dumbass,” said Gus. “How the hell did you almost get _shot_ in the _head_ if he didn’t use his gun?”

“Oh, it went off while he was gesturing dramatically,” said Shawn. “I was hoping I looked devastatingly rakish, but I’d settle for wounded hero.”

“You--” said Gus, and stopped. He had a lot of things he wanted to say, but he knew they wouldn’t do any good. He knew that Shawn would walk right into the next tense standoff they came to, and that he, Gus, would probably be right there next to him--actually, he would probably make a point to be right there next to him, since this time he’d been outside calling the police and had almost had a heart attack when he heard the gunshot. “How can you use words like ‘devastatingly rakish’ but you don’t know what a crisis of conscience is?” he settled for, eventually.

“Gus, you know you made one of those up yesterday--” said Shawn, and cut off. Gus turned and followed his line of sight. The first people who’d arrived to arrest the jewel thieves that Shawn and Gus had tracked down were the closest officers on patrol, which meant that although the case was one that had been worked by Juliet and Lassie from the start, four days ago, the detectives hadn’t been on the scene of the arrest. Until now.

Juliet got to them about two steps before Lassie, who seemed to be almost holding back. “Hey,” she said, sounding relieved, and kissed Gus. “Are you OK?”

“ _I’m_ fine,” said Gus, putting his arms around her and kissing her again. “It’s Shawn…” he trailed off a little, looking over Juliet’s shoulder.

Lassie looked possibly paler than Gus had ever seen him, which was saying something since he was a pale dude at the best of times. He’d gone right up to Shawn, who was still sitting on the back of the ambulance, but now he was just standing there, hovering his hands over the bandage on Shawn’s head, without touching it. “Shawn…” he said.

Shawn reached up and took Lassie’s hands, which were shaking slightly, and held them to his chest. “Hey,” he said. “Just a scratch, I promise. He missed. Well, mostly. Well, he missed anything important.”

“ _Shawn_ ,” said Lassie again, pulling one of his hands back and actually touching the bandage, gingerly. “Your head’s important.”

He sounded like he was trying to sound angry, but he mostly sounded scared. Gus knew how he felt. “Lassie,” said Shawn. “Carlton. I’m here. Really, I’m OK. At the time it was honestly just--startling. Sure, it stings a little, and sure, once the adrenaline wears off I’ll probably freak out some, but it’s over, and I’m fine.”

Lassie nodded, slightly, and then pulled Shawn into a hug and hid his face in Shawn’s hair. Gus realized that he should probably give them some privacy, and also that he’d been watching them for like a minute while ignoring his own girlfriend. Luckily, when he looked back down at Juliet, she just looked knowing. “Are they being cute?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Gus, “let’s leave them to it.”

“I need to go talk to the arresting officers,” said Juliet. “Come with me?”

“Sure,” said Gus; before they actually walked away, though, he realized something. “Hey, Shawn,” he said. Shawn pulled away from Lassie a few inches and looked at him. “You’re not just _my_ dumbass,” said Gus, “you’re Lassie’s dumbass, too. So take care of yourself. Dumbass.”

“Aw, thanks, Gussie Bear,” said Shawn, but as Gus turned away again, he saw Shawn’s hands tighten a little on Lassie’s suit jacket. He smiled as he followed Juliet to the patrol car.

** Jules **

Juliet had noticed Shawn and Carlton’s mutual attraction before either of them, she was pretty sure. She was...possibly more invested in the idea of them together than was normal, for someone thinking about her co-worker and ex-boyfriend. But also, she told herself, beyond any of that, they were her _friends_ , and she was very sure that being together would make them happy, and she wanted her friends to be happy! So _that_ was normal, of course.

She was also glad that they’d moved slowly, at first, once what had happened to Carlton became clear. Of course, she wanted them to be happy, but if that took time and boundaries and being careful with each other, that was healthy, too. Healthier than she would have expected from either of them, actually. Still, she was glad when she could talk--and slap--some sense into Carlton about moving forward with their relationship, and she was quietly very very excited the first time she actually saw them being physically affectionate.

OK, so Shawn was a handsy guy. In the four months or so where they’d been dating but not really acknowledging it, he would put his hands on Carlton’s arms and face during visions--so the norm, really--and he would squeeze Carlton’s shoulder when he sat down to eat lunch with him, and _both_ of them would wrap an arm around the other when they were leaning in close to say something. But that was the extent of it, until one afternoon when Shawn and Gus and Carlton and Juliet were all standing near the station doors, about to go in different directions. Gus had given Juliet a quick goodbye kiss already, and was halfway out the door, jingling his car keys in one hand. “Come on, Shawn,” he said.

Shawn was next to Carlton, and he ignored Gus for a second longer and put his hand on Carlton’s arm. “Want a kiss?” he said, so quietly that Juliet almost didn’t hear him.

Even more quietly, Carlton muttered, “Yeah,” and bent his head. Juliet narrowly avoided squealing; by the time she’d suppressed the urge, Shawn and Gus were both gone, and Carlton was saying, “What are you smiling about?” as he walked past her to the bullpen. Juliet kept smiling as she followed him.

She didn’t _mean_ to keep track of it, but she noticed pretty much every kiss after that, too. They solved a case, and Shawn crowed, “Lassie, I want to kiss you!” and Carlton nodded and leaned in. Carlton got frustrated over a lack of evidence for something else, and Shawn leaned over him at his desk and said, “Hey. Can I kiss you?” and when Carlton said yes, planted one on his forehead. Shawn and Gus left town for a night, unexpectedly, chasing down a lead that they neglected to mention to the police, and when they got back, suspect in tow, Juliet looked over from where she was embracing Gus and saw Carlton grinning openly at Shawn, who grinned back and said, “Kiss?” Carlton didn’t even take the time to agree, just hauled Shawn in and kissed him.

Then came the Roberts case, which was a hard one. At first, it looked like the unfortunate murder of a loving family man, but then it became clearer and clearer that it had been the almost justified killing of a man who’d been sexually abusing his niece for years. “Almost,” because Juliet was a cop, and she knew the justice system had flaws, but she also believed it was the best way to, well, get justice. Except that it sucked when the “justice” was going to be punishing the niece who’d finally snapped, instead of the abusive bastard who’d actually deserved to be prosecuted.

Neither she nor Carlton were very happy when they’d solved that one. Nor were Gus and Shawn, to their credit. The arrest happened at almost 7pm, and Juliet and Carlton resigned themselves to a long night of paperwork, intent on putting the case behind them. They both tried telling their significant others to go home, but it didn’t really work. Gus did leave, but only to pick up takeout for all of them. Shawn stayed, and kind of bounced off the walls in the bullpen for a while.

Eventually, he approached Carlton’s desk, and hovered near it. Juliet looked over sideways from her computer. “Hey,” said Shawn softly. “Want a kiss?”

“No,” said Carlton, still looking at his screen.

“OK,” said Shawn, agreeably, shifting from foot to foot. “Want a hug?”

“No,” said Carlton again. And then more quietly, “Not yet.”

“OK,” said Shawn, and shifted as though he was going to wander away again.

Carlton glanced towards him, then away, then held out his hand towards Shawn without looking at it, and muttered, “Shawn.”

Shawn took his hand. Juliet gave up being subtle and turned her head to watch them. Both of them were squeezing; Carlton’s knuckles were white. “When Gus comes back,” said Shawn conversationally, as though Carlton wasn’t crushing his fingers, “you should take a break and eat something. You, too, Jules.”

Juliet nodded, a little embarrassed to be caught looking, and turned back to her computer. Carlton said, “Yeah, OK,” and then took his hand back and started typing. As Shawn wandered off again and picked up a paperweight from someone’s desk, Juliet realized that this was probably the most intimate interaction she’d seen from them so far, and despite the hour and the case and really everything from the last few days, she smiled a little at her paperwork.

** Lassie and Shawn **

“Kiss?” said Shawn, his hand already on Carlton’s shoulder. Carlton nodded without looking up from his desk, and Shawn kissed him on the top of his head and then was gone, whirling out the door with Guster to do something useful and probably vaguely illegal in the name of their current case.

“Does Shawn ask whenever he kisses you?” said O’Hara, from her desk.

Carlton looked up and frowned, not because he was annoyed at the question, just because he was surprised by it. “I guess he does. Does he?”

“He has every time I’ve seen you two kiss,” said O’Hara, leaning back and apparently not too worried about her paperwork getting done any time soon. “Which is a lot of times. I mean, he doesn’t always say, ‘Want to kiss,’ but he always says _something_ and you always nod or say yes. Except when you say no. Which I’ve only seen--twice?”

“Are you keeping notes on this?” said Carlton, pushing away from his own desk.

“No,” said O’Hara, “I just pay attention.” Her cheeks went a little pink. “Anyway, you two are cute.”

“Oh,” said Carlton. He certainly didn’t mind. It was just maybe a little weird. “I don’t pay that much attention when you and Guster kiss.”

“That’s fine with me, and I’m sure with Gus too,” said O’Hara. She grinned and stretched and sighed, all normal precursors to leaning back into the computer and getting back to work. Before she actually started typing, though, she looked back over. “I’m just happy for you, Carlton,” she said. “And Shawn too. I’m impressed by him, actually. And I’m glad that you have someone who pays attention to what you need.”

“Well,” coughed Carlton, “I’m glad Guster treats you well, too,” and then, luckily, there was a commotion near the entrance as two beat cops brought in a struggling man in handcuffs, and they didn’t need to say anything else.

***

By the time they’d chased clues all the way to a petting zoo, Shawn knew that he and Gus wouldn’t be at their respective homes until late that evening. He was right, although technically, the home he was now opening the door to was Lassie’s, not his. He did have a key, though; no more breaking and entering required. And he spent a lot of time here. In fact, he might have missed rent on his apartment this month. Problems for future Shawn to deal with.

Current Lassie was on the couch, halfway through his dinner, some leftover curry he’d made a few days ago. By now, he knew better than to wait; he was aware Shawn would have gotten hungry and stopped for dinner on the way back. “Hi,” he said when Shawn came in, with a little smile. Shawn, privately, was pretty sure he loved that smile. He loved it even more because it really only came out around him.

“Hey, Lassie,” he said, and came and leaned over the back of the couch to see what Lassie was watching. “Kiss?” he added, already kind of moving into position, but ready to back off if needed. He didn’t usually ask when it came to touches that could technically have been platonic; after all, he’d crossed that line with Lassie long before they’d gotten together. But once it started getting any steamier, he liked to check, and even though their kisses weren’t always steamy, they seemed like a good threshold check point.

Lassie leaned in and kissed him briefly, then leaned back and seemed to just be sort of looking at his face. Shawn raised an eyebrow, still leaning across the back of the couch. “I love you,” said Lassie, and then looked a little startled at himself.

Shawn grinned hugely. He couldn’t have _not_ grinned if he’d tried. They’d been dancing around it for weeks, if not months, but neither of them had said it out loud until now. He took the shortest route and slithered over the back of the couch, narrowly avoiding Lassie’s bowl of food and ending up with the remote somewhere under him. “I love you too,” he said, lying on his back with his head on Lassie’s thigh. “Want to make out on the couch? Please say yes.”

Lassie put his bowl on the coffee table, and hauled Shawn up until they were sitting next to each other. “I would love to.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is (probably) it for this particular series. But now I am actually able to watch _Psych_ because it's free on Peacock so it's probably not it as far as all of the fanfiction I will ever post! Only time will show.


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